According to figures cited
at the "First Convention" of March 6-9, 1900, the Social
Democratic Party had added about 1000 dues paying members from
the first of the year, to stand at a total of about 4,500 at
the time of the Convention. [Social Democratic Herald,
March 17, 1900, pg. 1]

1899 ------------ "About
3,500"

1900 ------------ "About
4,500"

Socialist Party
of America Annual Membership Figures

The Socialist Party collected
dues monthly rather than annually, using a system of membership
cards and dues stamps. Under this system, stamps would be advanced
in bulk to State Party organizations and Language Federations,
who then sold these stamps to the membership at meetings. Members
missing a previous meeting would generally buy more than one
stamp at a time to pay for dues in arrears. Local and State organizations
-- or Language Federations, as the case may be -- would get a
share of the money for each dues stamp sold and would remit the
balance of funds to the National Office.

This system, borrowed
from trade unions of earlier days, inevitably resulted in a fluctuation
of the number of stamps sold by the National Office each month.
The standard method of calculating the membership of such organizations
involves the average number of stamps sold over the course of
a particular quarter or year. Scholars should remain dubious
of any single monthly stamp sales total being presented as indicative
of a group's true membership size, as partisans of the day often
did.

It does not seem that
the records of the National Office for the years 1901 and 1902
were preserved by the William Mailly administration coming into
power in 1903, and for over 100 years it was believed that no
precise membership figures were extant. In March 2007, I located
and transcribed the annual report of National Secretary Leon
Greenbaum in the weekly St. Louis Labor, however. This
report for 1901, far from being an example of "poor record
keeping," as I had previously believe to have typified the
SPA in its first 2 years, provided precise month-by-month figures
for both dues actually paid as well as the sum of members claimed
by the various State Committees but for whom dues were not paid
(a figure with appears below in brackets).

A 1912 estimate
of "about 4,000" members at the time of the Unity Convention
made by the Social Democratic Herald (an astonishingly
accurate estimate of the monthly dues actually paid for the year!)
is thus superceded by actual statistics -- Secretary Greenbaum
asserting that he had accounted for 6,657 paper members in the
various states in August 1901. [Report of Jan. 24, 1902, St.
Louis Labor, Jan. 25, 1902, pg. 5]

No hard numbers for 1902
membership are currently available, but the rough and overly
round estimate given in Secretary William Mailly's report for
1903 may be regarded as approximately correct.

The monthly figures for
1903 and 1904 come from Appeal to Reason no. 405 (Sept.
5, 1903) and another issue or two which I neglected to note.
The rest of the series of average monthly dues stamp sales per
year is based upon the official statistics published annually
in The American Labor Year Book by the Rand School of
Social Science, a Socialist Party training school. The figures
may be regarded as official and were not subject to any form
of systemic falsification:

of which the 15 Federations
averaged approximately 35,500 (44.2% of party)

July 1917 --- 92,316

Aug. 1917 --- 81,283

Sept. 1917 --- 77,605

1918 ------------ 82,344------- +
2.4%

of which the 15 Federations
averaged approximately 37,700 (45.8% of party)

1919 (Q-1) ------ 104,822 ------
+ 27.3%

of which the 15 Federations
averaged 56,740 (54.1% of party)

Jan. 1919 --- 109,589

Feb. 1919 --- 103,565

Mar. 1919 --- 101,315

1919 (Q-2) ------ 71,279

Apr. 1919 --- 104,108

May 1919 --- 67,512

June 1919 --- 42,217

July 1919 --- 39,750

These official membership
figures included those obtaining special "dual" stamps
issued for husband and wife as well as "exempt" stamps
issued to unemployed or striking members. For example, in 1914
there were 86,140 "regular" members, 3,766 "dual"
members, and 3,673 "exempt" members, netting the total
of 93,579. [The American Socialist, Jan. 23, 1915, pg.
3.]

A few things should be
noted from the above figures: (1) That the Socialist Party showed
its most explosive period of growth in the years 1910-12; (2)
That despite the defection of the party's Right Wing over the
issue of the war, the SPA held its own in 1917-18 despite its
uncompromising anti-militarist stance and the harsh government
persecution related to this, which included the jailing of members
and the financial destruction of a majority of the SP-allied
press; (3) That the alleged "flooding" of the membership
with new elements during the first quarter of 1919 was well within
historical parameters of growth for the group both in terms of
absolute number of members and the percentage rate of growth
which the new recruits represented.

After the suspensions,
expulsions, and defections ensuing from the party crisis of 1919
and its aftermath, Socialist Party membership plummeted. At the
time of the1919 Emergency National Convention, the SPA claimed
an actually paid membership of 39,750, according to a report
in the NY Call, Aug. 30, 1919, pg. 1. Figures above for
1919 are from the report delivered by Adolph Germer to the 1919
Convention (NY Call, Sept. 2, 1919, pg. 7).

Figures below for1920
average are from Trachtenberg and Glassberg (eds.), The American
Labor Year Book, 1921-1922, pg. 392; for monthly totals and
English totals, Jan.-Nov. 1920, from "Memorandum 6: Publications,"
Theodore Draper Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, Box 30,
pg. 6. Figures for 1921-1922 from DeLeon and Fine (eds.), The
American Labor Year Book, 1925, pg. 141:

1919 (Q-4) ------- 34,926 ---
-- - 66.7% from the Q1 average

1920 ------ ------ 26,766------ -
23.4%

Jan. 1920 --- 38,386 [English
= 24,684]

Feb. 1920 --- 28,667 [English
= 17,506]

Mar. 1920 --- 36,829 [English
= 16,504]

Q-I Average: 34,627

Apr. 1920 --- 27,816 [English
= 13,131]

May 1920 --- 20,856 [English
= 8,969]

June 1920 --- 24,470 [English
= 14,904]

Q-II Average: 24,381

July 1920 --- 22,313 [English
= 10,930]

Aug. 1920 --- 22,502 [English
= 12,169]

Sept. 1920 --- 22,796
[English = 10,789]

Q-III Average: 22,537

Oct. 1920 --- 28,183 [English
= 14,315]

Nov. 1920 --- 27,420 [English
= 17,534]

Dec. 1920 --- 20,451

Q-IV Average: 25,351

1921 ------------ 13,484------ -
49.6%

Jan. 1921 --- 24,587

1922 ------------ 11,019------ -
18.3%

The 1921 figure includes
the loss of the approximately 7,000 member Finnish Socialist
Federation, which severed ties with the SPA effective Dec. 31,
1920. After maintaining its independence for the better part
of 1921, this organization later affiliated with the Workers
Party of America.

After
1922 the SP became no less secretive than the Communist movement about
its actual membership figures. Instead of releasing a membership count,
which would publicize the magnitude of the party's implosion, the
membership series for the party stopped appearing in print and
cumulative vote totals for Socialist candidates across the country
began to be published instead. Party membership seems to have dropped
below 10,000 around 1923 and to have remained under that mark for the
remainder of the 1920s. Publicly claimed memberships -- all very highly
suspect -- of 18,000 (1924), 25,000 (1925) and "about 15,000" (1926)
provide top estimates for the period. No internal documents have
emerged to date to confirm or correct those all-too-round and obviously
too high numbers.

It should be emphasized
that the party crisis of 1919-1921 did not have a long-term effect
of "Americanizing" the SP from foreign-born members
-- even after the smoke cleared from the mass purges of the Language
Federations and defections, the Socialist Party retained a very
high foreign language-speaking component. Some 41.6% of SP members
in the first quarter of 1922 were affiliated with the party through
Language Federations, according to the SP's own statistics. [See:
DeLeon and Fine (eds.), The American Labor Year Book, 1923-1924,
(New York: Rand School Press, 1924), pg. 125.] In short, many
of the members of the Language Federations proved just as loyal
to the institution of Socialist Party as their English-speaking
comrades.

With immigration restricted
and the membership aging, the SPA's Language Federations showed
decline throughout the decade of the 1920s. The percentage of
the SP maintaining membership through the Language Federations
fell from 34.8% to 30.1% of the party between 1927 and 1928,
according to figures in the report of Executive Henry cited above.
The SP maintained 5 federations during these years -- Finnish,
Yugoslav [Slovenian], Jewish, Italian, and Lithuanian. The component
enrolled in English language branches rose by 9.3% over the same
interval.

Monthly and quarterly figures for specific months
in 1927, 1928, and 1929 have been gathered from official party
financial reports on reel 75 of the Socialist Party Papers microfilm.

1927 ---------- -------------- xxxx

Jan. 1927 --- 10,702 [English
= 5,732]

Feb. 1927 --- 5,984 [English
= 2,911]

March 1927 --- 9,340 [English
= 4877]

Q-I AVERAGE --- 8,675
[English = 4,506]

July 1927 --- 10,059 [English
= 4,438]

Aug. 1927 --- 5,039 [English
= 2,219]

1928 ----------7,793
[English = 4,337]--- xxxx

Jan. 1928 --- 9,901 [English
= 5,314]

Feb. 1928 --- 7,678 [English
= 4,528]

March 1928 --- 8,529 [English
= 5,325]

Q-I AVERAGE --- 8,703
[English = 5,056]

April 1928 --- no data

May 1928 --- no data

June 1928 --- no data

July 1928 --- 13,624 [English
= 8,529]

Aug. 1928 --- 6,812 [English
= 4,265]

Sept. 1928 --- no data

Oct. 1928 --- no data

Nov. 1928 --- 7,360 [English
= 3,578]

Dec. 1928 --- 6,909 [English
= 3,359]

The early 1930s saw a
modest comeback of the Socialist Party in terms of membership
growth and influence under the leadership of Norman Thomas before
the party blew apart in factional warfare in the second half
of the decade:

1929 ------------------ 9,560 [English
= 4,269]

1930 ------------------ 9,736 [English
= 6,291]

Jan. 1930 --- 11,281 [English
= 6,867]

Feb. 1930 --- 7,753 [English
= 4,397]

Mar. 1930 --- 7,029 [English
- 2,306]

Q-I Average: 8,688

Apr. 1930 --- 6,847 [English
= 2,812]

May 1930 --- 5,983 [English
= 3,371]

June 1930 --- 7,626 [English
= 4,286]

Q-II Average: 6,819

July 1930 --- 5,307 [English
= 3,067]

Aug. 1930 --- 3,214 [English
= 1,582]

Sept. 1930 --- 4,674 [English
= 2,024]

Q-III Average: 4,398

Oct. 1930 --- 6,576 [English
= 4,182]

Nov. 1930 --- 2,951

Dec. 1930 --- 6,316

Q-IV Average: 5,281

1931 ----------------- 10,389 [English
= 7,024]

1932 ----------------- 16,863 [English
= 13,854]

1933 ----------------- 18,548 [English
= 15,413]

1934 ----------------- 20,951 [English
= 17,030]

1935 ----------------- 19,121 [English
= 15,698]

Dec. 1935 --- 19,120

Sources: The 1929-1935 numbers
are the report printed for delegates to the party's 1937 Special
National Convention, figures which include both paid and dues-exempt
memberships. Month totals for 1930 appear to be "Dues Actually Paid" figures. The 1936 decline was exacerbated by the disaffiliation
of the Finnish and Jewish Federations, organizations loyal to
the Old Guard faction, with 1,137 and 606 members, respectively.
The date of last report for these federations was May 1936.

1936 ----------------- 11,290 [English
= 10,955]

Jan. 1936 --- 16,656

Feb. 1936 --- 15,648

1937 ------------------ 5,748

Source:
1936 and 1937 numbers from Frederic Cornell, A History of the Rand
School of Social Science, 1906 to 1956. PhD dissertation. Columbia
University Teachers College, 1976. Table 1: "Membership of the
Socialist Party of America," pg. 259.

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Content by Tim Davenport. Last updated Jan. 24, 2014.